Cards stop working

[Christoffer Glans]

Odd.
But what I mean if you can see the card / device, likely there is a way to format it with the computer to get it working again. If it does not show anything on any device.. then that is more critical.

As I mentioned, they cannot be formatted, changed or anything. It shows an error message that it couldn't format the card. Some cards doesn't even show up in disk utility.

 

[Roberto Franco]

I'm a Komodo owner since Dec 2020. To be on the safe side I bought the "RED CFAST 2.0 CARD READER" and 2x "RED CFAST 2.0 FOR KOMODO". I use a Mac Pro 2019 with the macOS updated regularly and also my Komodo updated regularly with the last (non Beta) firmware.

I can attest that my both "RED CFAST 2.0 FOR KOMODO" cards shows bizarre problems. I format them exclusively on the Komodo and just use the "RED CFAST 2.0 CARD READER" plugged on the top ports of the Mac Pro. Sometimes I turn on the Komodo and the cards are not recognisable or suggest a scan to fix problems and this happens with both cards and I get quite nervous to loose footage.

I was wondering if this is a production problem with the cards and what we can do about it ...

 

[K. Rixon]

I had an angelbird 512gb card go bad in the middle of an event, which resulted in lost footage as well as the time/moments lost to swap to another card.

To their credit, Angelbird replaced the card.

I have 4 cards - 2x 512, 2x 256, all angelbird. I also get errors when mounting cards to the komodo, requiring a new format, even if the card has been formatted by the camera already. It hasn't resulted in lost footage yet, but my confidence in Angelbird is shaken to say the least. I won't be purchasing any additional products from them.

Is there a more reliable brand people have experience with? I hate to repurchase media, but I can't risk losing footage - is Angelbird known for this?

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Is there a more reliable brand people have experience with? I hate to repurchase media, but I can't risk losing footage - is Angelbird known for this?

This is something Red needs to handle. They can't sell cards that are this unreliable. They need to deal with brands that have quality and reliable products and sell them as Red branded cards.

It's an absolute joke if Angelbird cards sold by Red themselves as Red branded cards are this bad. After all their talk about being careful in testing and that we buy their products at higher prices because of these tests and quality assurances, we get inferior products than third party options.

As seen elsewhere on this forum my love for Red has been slowly diminished, but this is seriously making me question if Red will even be around in a couple of years. This type of failure, that I have FOUR cards that fail when I have four cards precisely for the precaution that if one or two fails I can still keep shooting, is making me really question how Red operates in terms of quality.

The whole reason we buy Red cameras instead of consumer cameras is to have a reliable camera for professional work. When stuff like this happens it's worse than my consumer grade DSLR from 15 years ago. It still runs, it still works like a charm. But Red cameras feel like an old unreliable car that you never know if they will shut down in the middle of the road.

And Red support replied with the usual blanked statement of sending in everything, camera, cards all of it. Why do we even talk to support if all solutions are to send in the equipment? Why not have an automated service page online where we can just send in the gear directly? And I will not send in my camera when the problem here is so obviously the cards. It's easier for me to just buy a card from somewhere else to get through production than having to wait for weeks to get my camera back.

All of this is a farce.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Well everybody wanted cheap media, guess ya got it? Hopefully I get to experience this fun this year. At least the cards arent $4,300

I didn't want cheap cards, I wanted better cards, I want cards that is almost impossible to fail. I have never understood people's fascination with cheaper cards if the alternative is better cards but more expensive. Still, yeah, the previous cards were too expensive, but I much rather have that than the kind of crap this is. It still cost me $2000 to get these cards and now they're probably bricked because Red choose poorly. If others report similar unmountable cards, then seriously Red needs to fix this shit... or they'll just probably do the same as always, release a new camera to cover past problems. So we will probably get a Komodo 2 with other cards, other batteries, other functions and sure, that's good, but it will mean all that investment of previous gear was a big waste of money.

Why would I continue to invest in Red gear if there are always problems occurring with that gear? Besides Red I've used Canon still cameras for many many years now and I have never had any issues whatsoever. I could go on and list every other type of gear that I have and I have never had the same headache as I do with Red gear. And this type of gear is supposed to be expensive for its reliability, that's why we have professional cinema cameras because they should not fail in the same manner as consumer gear. It's the most important part of the difference between consumer and professional.

 

[Will Vazquez]

Well everybody wanted cheap media, guess ya got it? Hopefully I get to experience this fun this year. At least the cards arent $4,300

This isn't about inexpensive media compared to ultra expensive RedMags, it's about the unreliability of Angelbird cards and Red-branded Angelbird cards. There are other people here with similar issues with their Angelbird cards so it's not an isolated incident. ProGrade and Sandisk are way cheaper than Redmags and are super reliable.

 

[Roberto Franco]

I’ve got in touch with Angelbird and explained the situation. Updates here soon as I receive a reply.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

I’ve got in touch with Angelbird and explained the situation. Updates here soon as I receive a reply.

Awesome dude, thank you!

Still haven't heard anything back from Red support after the last back and forth so I don't know what they're thinking. What I'm thinking is that I should get four new cards for the trouble and that they take note of all the problems people have and get a deal with ProGrade or Sandisk instead. I have old Sandisk CF cards for my older DSLRs and they've been in the drawer for over 12 years now... still work, old memories on those cards, nothing gone.

 

[Björn Benckert]

This is something Red needs to handle. They can't sell cards that are this unreliable. They need to deal with brands that have quality and reliable products and sell them as Red branded cards.

It's an absolute joke if Angelbird cards sold by Red themselves as Red branded cards are this bad. After all their talk about being careful in testing and that we buy their products at higher prices because of these tests and quality assurances, we get inferior products than third party options.

As seen elsewhere on this forum my love for Red has been slowly diminished, but this is seriously making me question if Red will even be around in a couple of years. This type of failure, that I have FOUR cards that fail when I have four cards precisely for the precaution that if one or two fails I can still keep shooting, is making me really question how Red operates in terms of quality.

The whole reason we buy Red cameras instead of consumer cameras is to have a reliable camera for professional work. When stuff like this happens it's worse than my consumer grade DSLR from 15 years ago. It still runs, it still works like a charm. But Red cameras feel like an old unreliable car that you never know if they will shut down in the middle of the road.

And Red support replied with the usual blanked statement of sending in everything, camera, cards all of it. Why do we even talk to support if all solutions are to send in the equipment? Why not have an automated service page online where we can just send in the gear directly? And I will not send in my camera when the problem here is so obviously the cards. It's easier for me to just buy a card from somewhere else to get through production than having to wait for weeks to get my camera back.

All of this is a farce.

My red cards have been in quite heavy rotation and as I'm also quite sloppy I pull them out without ejecting them etc and they been trough dust, rain and heavy humidity. Not a single hiccup. So as I see it it's quite unlikely that you got 4 cards that gone faulty more likely you have a connector in the camera or reader or such that has messed up your cards. Those connectors are very small and look sensitive to the point I'm surprised I have not broken it yet.

 

[Manfred Poehlmann]

One commonality that you may have overlooked is the card reader. If you used the same card reader on both the Mac and the PC, could it maybe have trashed the cards?

 

[Manfred Poehlmann]

I also haven't used my camera in a few months and just checked my cards. I have 2 Red 512GB cards and 2 ProGrade 512GB cards. When I put the cards in the camera, the 2 Red cards needed to be formatted while the 2 ProGrade cards were good. I've noticed this in the past where the Red (Angelbird) cards lost their formatting after sitting for a while.

 

[M Harvey]

So as I see it it's quite unlikely that you got 4 cards that gone faulty more likely you have a connector in the camera or reader or such that has messed up your cards. Those connectors are very small and look sensitive to the point I'm surprised I have not broken it yet.

Agree with Björn-- it's quite difficult to rule out hardware factors based on the information we have. It's a very puzzling issue, and it's going to be hard for anyone to diagnose the issue without examining multiple parts of the system: not just the cards themselves, but potentially the camera and reader as well.

The other thing you could do yourself is buy a new card (from any brand) and test it. But you might be sacrificing the card if it is an issue with other hardware.

I'm sorry it's happened, that really sucks. Please report back when you have some results from Red and/or Angelbird.

 

[Nick Morrison]

I also haven't used my camera in a few months and just checked my cards. I have 2 Red 512GB cards and 2 ProGrade 512GB cards. When I put the cards in the camera, the 2 Red cards needed to be formatted while the 2 ProGrade cards were good. I've noticed this in the past where the Red (Angelbird) cards lost their formatting after sitting for a while.

I think we're seeing a pattern here that the Angelbird cards are just not working as well as other brands. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Michael Hastings]

This isn't about inexpensive media compared to ultra expensive RedMags, it's about the unreliability of Angelbird cards and Red-branded Angelbird cards. There are other people here with similar issues with their Angelbird cards so it's not an isolated incident. ProGrade and Sandisk are way cheaper than Redmags and are super reliable.

I've been a dealer for Angelbird for years and have used just two Angelbird cfExpress cards in my R5 and an off brand reader since November 2020 with over 100 cycles without a single glitch. Also lots of experience with Angelbird cFast and SSDs in Blackmagic Ursa Mini and Ursa Broadcast cameras and Hyperdeck 12g with no issues either.

Obviously anecdotal evidence isn't the best but we know RED likes to do firmware things to make their cards proprietary and potentially "more reliable" or better able to handle high write speeds.

That would lead me to believe that it is probably something like firmware "steroids" that was supposed to make them capable of higher write speeds by closer integration with RED firmware - and maybe just pushed it too far. Also it is my understand that the "bits" in solid state storage aren't totally "solid" and degrade over time. I don't know if that is normally handled with Error Correction, or moving weak bits to spare bits, or if there is a way of completely refreshing all of the bits - or if it is just what happens to solid state media.

It's probably not that common for these cards to sit for months without use - so it may not have affected that many users. (yet). But if lack of consistent use is a problem that should be clearly stated.

I appreciate everything that Phil does on Reduser but I don't think it should be him that has to respond to all of these issues (sensor split and others).

I've wondered why there has been so little RED employee interaction here - but had a thought on that today. Possibly the fact that the ownership of RED camera company and REDUSER website are so close, they may have realized after the Jinni fiasco that anything they say can be legally construed to be binding on RED camera company (as it should be). So I expect that in the future REDUSER will only be a place for questions and comments from people not associated with RED and RED marketing announcements. By moving their interactions to Facebook they create a legal buffer.

Like Chris I have concerns about RED's viability over the next years. RED has had a number of stumbles and with the competitive environment I don't think things will be any easier.

 

[Phil Holland]

I appreciate everything that Phil does on Reduser but I don't think it should be him that has to respond to all of these issues (sensor split and others

Thank you Michael. I have lots of thoughts on why RED doesn't have more direct interaction here on REDUSER (though they do pop up now and again), but in relationship to anything going "weird" with anything there is only one true path and that's the Support link at RED.com, specifically this link:

https://support.red.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=238518

That gets whatever issue anybody is having into their system and allows them to see if it's something their team can respond to based on the data. But most critical, in the case anything actually wrong with the camera you can submit a log and have them digest what's going on. That's something nobody here can do. Customer support is better or on par with other manufacturers in my experience, but I have my ear to the pavement across the industry on this stuff. And the digital cinema camera companies do work hard on getting the issue resolved as quickly as possible. That's actually one of the more notable differences than the broad consumer market. But I will say service is a whole different ballgame on that larger scale in terms of tracking, who get's assigned, how many people are thrown at the thing, etc.

I don't envy anybody in customer support at any camera manufacturer. I have been told over the years that most issues are indeed user related by several companies, which actually extends outwards to other forms of tech. I even can confirm this in my own experience when somebody reaches out to me at 4am when whatever camera they are using doesn't power on, push out a signal, etc. It then comes down to a mouse hunt for whatever is leading up to this moment of frustration and how to resolve it. It requires a great deal of patience in the face of frustrated and often angry people, even when the source to the issue is on their shoulders. Larger tech has obviously deployed 3rd party or tiered support levels via questionnaires to vet out things that are actually wrong or not. It's become a nightmare as the market has grown.

To that point, communities are useful in that regard as common pitfalls are often tackled or linked to, there's thousands of examples of that here and pretty much every good forum out there.

There are employees from RED who frequent the forums and post occasionally, but it's few and far in between unless it's a fairly direct answer as of late.

To your point about posting here or on Facebook, they are just posts on the internet. There's no legal buffer if people are referencing anything posted online. That specific speedbump has had a very negative impact for many professionals posting and being more open to share. And I'm not talking about just here, but all over the net. That additional concern about comments being used to attack character, have an impact on professional work, and other variables is often now just leading to the "oh I don't post much nowadays" mentality. Which is fine. This is coming from somebody who was personally attacked and even threatened during that little lovely moment and still contributes to the filmmaking community as a whole.

Anyways. Chris knows what to do and hopefully whatever is going on gets resolved. The astronomical low odds of all of his media being bad alludes to likely a firmware or some other weird thing going on. I don't think his media is "bad". Not in that span of time and ownership.

 

[Michael Hastings]

Phil: thanks for all you do.

Regarding service, a big part of it is the "commoditization" of even "professional" gear.

(I stumbled into this industry while still in college in 1980 so I've seen pretty much every change from 1" type C to what we have today. Got tied in with the upper echelons of Sony when on a test team for Sony's first professional 3-chip camera at NAB 1986, then with the upper echelons of Panasonic in the 90s when I manufactured hundreds of housings sold under the Panasonic brand for 3 of their consumer camcorders and two of the "industrial" camcorders, so got some insider insight (the Jacques Cousteau factor made me seem cool :wink5: and I was a systems integrator dealer for both so got all the dealer info. )

In 1991 a BVW300 Betacam was about $40,000 (about $83,000 in 2022 dollars and it was just the middle level - the BVW400 was the higher end analog and Digital Betacam was on its way at even higher prices). That leaves a lot of room for paying high support costs. In those days you could call Panasonic, Sony, Ikegami, etc. at 4am and get a support ENGINEER sitting in a lab that could diagnose and understand the product all the way to circuit level.

Today I buy an R5 for $3499 ($1679 1991 dollars). Those Betacams were effectively about 1/3 megapixel and maybe 8 stops dynamic range - they never specced that calling it 600% whatever that is.) R5 - 45 megapixels and somewhere around 12 stops depending who measures (for comparison DXO mark says R5 14.4 EV vs 14.8 EV for RED Dragon) At these prices (and I would include Komodo) any hobbyist with a good job can afford a "pro" level camera - that's commoditization.

The other factor is the "B&Hization" of the dealer channel. Before the World Wide Web, people really didn't know what the dealer paid and dealers could make enough profit to offer real local support as well.

Nowadays, dealer discounts are less than they used to be, now typically 20% at most and often several points less. Then you factor that the local dealer has to discount 6 -7% just to match B&H, Adorama, etc. because they don't have to charge sales tax. (legally the customer is supposed to remit the sales tax to their own state but virtually no-one does and it is rarely enforced.) Usually you have to give a little more discount just to make your customer think they are getting at least a little bit of a deal, so after factoring in shipping - it's really hard to make any significant profit - maybe a few hundred on $5000 camera. Then consider that if your local customer wants an accessory - say a $99 battery plate, or handle or such - with shipping you actually would lose money so you just refer them to the mail orders anyway.

 

[Phil Holland]

Heh. You and I both know the industry was staggeringly much, much smaller in the 90s Michael Agree back then you could literally call a company and talk to somebody who worked on a camera, coded software, etc. Depending on growth and expansion, everything changed in the 2000s or 2010s on this front. In what we would refer to as "our industry" I can confidently say whatever transpired in the 2010s, last decade, altered how companies interact with "the horde". It's also interesting seeing companies adapt to make sometimes fairly complex products targeted for much larger audiences than they did before. There's more Komodos in the world than any previous RED camera made before it. I suspect there's already more V-Raptors even than many of the DSMC2 bodies. I'm certain there's pressure points RED is learning from there. And I don't want to point out that these have been weird times, but they have and it's even had an impact on the multi-billion dollar camera manufacturers as well. Interesting stuff.

I think it's very interesting looking across the industry now at camera pricing and value as well as performance. There is a segment tier that's truly all about rental houses and larger to mid-range production companies and equipment is priced into that space specifically for a variety of reasons. RED's in an interesting space making very powerful cameras that are 1/3rd to 1/4 of the price of competing cameras that don't do as much again. Meanwhile we have new 8K cameras that are priced lower that don't quite reach the RED level of performance and features, but are certainly a deal. And we're just getting started with this decade of camera releases. It's extremely wild times.

On a fun note that you may enjoy specifically and totally off topic. I am a former Cousteau Kid. I met Jacques when I was very young. I was part of a group known as the Audubon Student Naturalists back then and onward for many, many years. The founder of our group Maurine knew him and setup the whole week with him and his crew. Nearly ditched a couple of school years when I was younger to go out to sea, but opted for a different route for a variety of reasons. But that moment certainly had a remarkable impact on me early on for sure.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

My red cards have been in quite heavy rotation and as I'm also quite sloppy I pull them out without ejecting them etc and they been trough dust, rain and heavy humidity. Not a single hiccup. So as I see it it's quite unlikely that you got 4 cards that gone faulty more likely you have a connector in the camera or reader or such that has messed up your cards. Those connectors are very small and look sensitive to the point I'm surprised I have not broken it yet.

I handle my gear better than most people, to the fault that I never dare doing some cool shots sometimes because I won't put my camera into a hot spot like that.

Nothing is physically broken with the gear. I haven't even had any production use of this camera. The only factor here is time for the cards in the drawer.

I've seen them do a similar thing earlier, when I let one of them be for a while because I shot on the other cards instead. That one card that I left alone had problems mounting when I tried to use it again and it looked dead. Only factor there was time, THAT card had been laying for a while compared to the others. Back then, that started working all of a sudden, like if it's been "charged". But now, all cards have been laying for a while because of a long project that didn't require the camera and didn't allow me to put time into shooting anything else. So after three months all cards behave exactly like this other card, but I can't get them to work. I've been putting the cards into the camera and letting it be on for hours to see if there's anything "charged" in them that needs to come back to life, but there's nothing happening.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

One commonality that you may have overlooked is the card reader. If you used the same card reader on both the Mac and the PC, could it maybe have trashed the cards?

Can't explain why the cards worked in December and when putting them into the camera they can't be formatted or fixed. Some of the cards I've mounted to the PC and Mac first but some I mounted to the camera first. So in that case that would mean both the camera and reader trashed the card, which is highly unlikely.

I also haven't used my camera in a few months and just checked my cards. I have 2 Red 512GB cards and 2 ProGrade 512GB cards. When I put the cards in the camera, the 2 Red cards needed to be formatted while the 2 ProGrade cards were good. I've noticed this in the past where the Red (Angelbird) cards lost their formatting after sitting for a while.

This is what I think it is. The Angelbird cards are a simply crap that were sold to us by Red pointing out they're tested and approved. Maybe they should evaluate this and maybe cut a deal with manufacturers of quality instead, like ProGrade.

Why should we trust Red when they remark that they're doing extensive testing. Obviously, these cards haven't been tested to the extent they need to be. Time not using the cards is an extremely important factor to function. This is the same with the awful internal battery on the DSMC2, which needs to be recharged every month to keep the Red healthy. This means that any downtime with the gear isn't safe for the gear.

It's really not a good when our camera gear has a kind of timer counting down to becoming faulty. It's extremely bad design if this is the case with the cards.

I think Red should compensate everyone who lost their cards because of this. After going after Jinnimags (rightfully though) with the main argument being that Jinnimags didn't care about testing and quality and all that counted into the price tag of Red sold cards, this time around it's Red themselves who sells cards that fail because of something as stupid as time spent in a drawer.

Nothing of this issue points to faulty things with the reader or Camera.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Agree with Björn-- it's quite difficult to rule out hardware factors based on the information we have. It's a very puzzling issue, and it's going to be hard for anyone to diagnose the issue without examining multiple parts of the system: not just the cards themselves, but potentially the camera and reader as well.

The other thing you could do yourself is buy a new card (from any brand) and test it. But you might be sacrificing the card if it is an issue with other hardware.

I'm sorry it's happened, that really sucks. Please report back when you have some results from Red and/or Angelbird.

I can say that since I've been working with Red gear, files, cards etc. for over 14 years now, I've looked into all possible sources for the problem, but so far the only factor I can induce being a reason is the time they spent in the drawer. Mentioned in another post that I've had one card act up similar to what is happening now. But after a couple of minutes in the camera it started working again. But that was like one or two months not used, three months seems to kill the cards, as I cannot get them to start up again after being in the camera for hours now.